Abstract
Recent educators and researchers emphasize the necessity of considering visual culture including new media, popular culture and social contexts. Yet the introduction to Art History has been often taught using a lecture-based, "high art" canon even in Japanese academic institutions. This article describes a lesson plan of Art History for digital communication designers who aim to work in the game, movie, web or publishing industry. In this lesson, various historical and contemporary visual works are presented and correlated to character storytelling, icon design, social messages, economical backgrounds as well as physical aspects such as colors and compositions. Students seemed to find more relevance and interest when the theory was taught with hands-on art practice than when they listen to lectures alone.
